When a young family in the French countryside are attacked and killed by a hulking figure, a huge and hairy man is taken into custody where a trio of public defendants are assigned to his case where they attempt to ascertain the truth about him.
As should be apparent from the film’s very title if not the plot rundown, we’re talking werewolves. It’s a little subtler than your average monster flick, at least in the beginning, where we’re treated to a scientific deconstruction of lycanthropy, equating aspects of the associated physical characteristics with various genetic conditions.
As the film begins there is a distinctive found footage feel to it, but for once out of a degree of necessity rather than an overplayed stylistic gimmick, as a handheld recording shows the initial attack while police recordings and news reports swiftly bring us up to speed with developments. The style is soon abandoned once the story proper gets underway, but the film nevertheless keeps a close-up shakeycam technique that maintains the feel of found footage despite it being clear there’s nobody actually recording it.
The film takes a swift and intense change of direction at the halfway point, after which anything about the film that could have set it apart, including a possible conspiracy surrounding the suspect’s arrest, is abandoned for some standard action sequences and sub-par CGI gore. A few moments stick in your mind such as computer effects subtly augmenting physical transformation or one character who thinks he might have become afflicted collecting a necessary genetic sample by slicing through his eyeball with a shard of glass, but for the most part it’s nothing you’ve not seen two dozen times before.
Despite William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman also being the director and co-writers of the boring (and infuriatingly climaxed) The Devil Inside and the annoying Stay Alive, with Wer they had the potential to create something distinctive and different. It’s just a shame they didn’t.
WER / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: WILLIAM BRENT BELL / SCREENPLAY: WILLIAM BRENT BELL, MATTHEW PETERMAN / STARRING: A.J. COOK, SEBASTIAN ROCHE, VIK SAHAY, SIMON QUATERMAN, BRIAN SCOTT O’CONNOR / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 19TH
